Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

10 Ways to Overclock Brain Activity

1. Physical exercise. Physical exercise strengthens your brain. Exercise benefitsyour brain cells. The blood vessels inside your brain dilate and increase blood flow when you engage in regular exercise. Exercise helps to elimin toxins and allows oxygen and other nutrients to flow into your brain strengthening your brain cells.
2. Mind exercises. Concentration and clear thinking are more or less automatic once you remove distractions. Learn to stop and watch your busy mind. As you notice things that are subtly bothering you, deal with them. This might mean making a phone call you need to make, or putting things on a list so you can forget them for now. With practice, this becomes easier, and your thinking becomes more powerful.
3. Healthy breakfast. Start your day with a healthy breakfast. Skipping breakfast affects your brainpower and performance at home, school or work. Minimize your eating during the day to mostly live raw fruits and veggies and their juices. This will help you detoxify and nourish your brain with essential nutrients and antioxidants to protect your brain from daily free radicals assaults.
4. Increase Water Intake. Given that your brain is about 80 percent water, the first rule of brain nutrition is adequate water to hydrate your brain. Even slight dehydration can raise stress hormones, which can damage your brain over time. Drink at least 84 ounces of water a day. It is best to have your liquids unpolluted with artificial sweeteners, sugar, caffeine, or alcohol. You can use herbal, non-caffeinated tea bags, such as raspberry or strawberry flavored, and make unsweetened iced tea. Green tea is also good for brain function as it contains chemicals that enhance mental relaxation and alertness.
5. Keep journals and notebooks. All the smart people write down their ideas, thoughts and observations. Writing things down lets, your brain know that you value “it’s” ideas. How does it reward you? By providing more ideas and better ideas. Writing things down creates a feedback loop that makes you smarter. You objectify your thoughts onto paper and that helps you think about them in a more powerful way. This is a great way to improve your brainpower.
6. Think positively. Thinking positively enables you to access your higherthinking abilities. When you are positive and feeling good, your mind functions smoothly. Ask yourself emotion-leading questions like, “What am I grateful for right now?” and “Who do I love and who loves me?”
7. Make sure you sleep enough. Your brain is rejuvenate during those sleeping hours. Research from the University of California suggests that if you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk. Sleep allows your brain to process new memories, practice new skills and solve problems. Therefore, a good night’s sleep is essential to boost your brainpower. How many hours sleep constitutes a good night’s sleep will vary between individuals, but between 6 – 8 hours, sleep is normally considered sufficient.
8. Creative Visualization. Use the power of Creative Visualization. Creative Visualization is a technique that involves the use of mental energy to transform and improve the life of the individual who uses the technique. You can use your brain’s mental energy to improve your life because your imagination is incredibly powerful and, when used correctly, can enhance your life by creating what you really want. Creative visualisation can be used to accelerate learning, improve memory and motivation, and of course, improve brainpower!
9. Develop your creativity and your intuition. Creativity gives power to your thinking. Raw computation can be done by computers now, but humans provide the creative thought that shapes our world. Intuition can be an important part of brainpower. Einstein and others have relied heavily on their intuitive hunches.
10. Make a brainpower plan. It takes about twenty to thirty days of repetition to establish new habits, many psychologists will tell you. This means that when you create your plan for improved brainpower, be sure you plan to use that new problem solving technique, or eat those new brain foods for at least three weeks. You can use many of the brain boosters here and get immediate results, but it is creating new habits that will give you the most brainpower.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

3 Ways To Drink More Water

After a little research it is apparent that nobody really knows where the saying that you need to drink 8 cups of water per day comes from. Some people trace it back to a study in the 1980's, and other people claim that doctors starting telling people that amount because it was a good goal, but didn't have any scientific research to back it up with.

Either way, the point is clear, water does wonders for your body, and your brain. Water is well known to cleanse your body of harmful chemicals through your intestines and also throughout your urine tract. Without proper water intake, our bodies break down very quickly, in a matter of days. Without food, however, some people can live for a week or two. That just shows how important water is to our bodies.

Here are 3 quick tips for taking in more water.

1. Always have water available.

I like to buy the 12 ounce bottles of water and keep them in the fridge. Whenever I go to the gym I grab a bottle. On my way out the door to work, I grab a bottle. Before a trip that will be 30 minutes or longer, I grab a bottle. When I watch a movie, I grab a bottle.

Whenever I am sitting watching TV or a movie, I will keep the bottle in my hand with the lid off. I take a lot of little sips until the bottle is gone. A great way of making sure you drink more water is to make sure it is easily accessible.

2. Keep it cold.

I don't know many people who like to drink room temperature water, I sure don't. If you keep your water cold, you will drink more. I make sure there is always ice in my freezer, this make it very easy to have a cold glass of water anytime.

3. Chose water in restaurants.

Whenever I go out to eat, I always drink water with some lemon. The lemon adds a little spunk to the taste and the water is always nice, cold and refreshing. After a short time you will stop craving your old drink of choice and will begin to appreciate the taste, or lack of taste, that water provides.

Give water a shot and your body will be thankful!